The ATHENA Interoperability Framework (AIF) (Fig. 3) was developed by the ATHENA Integrated Project for software sys- tems and enterprise applications (Berre et al., 2007b). The AIF adopts a holistic view on interoperability with the aim of analyz- ing and understanding technical requirements and business needs as well as providing a multidisciplinary and model-driven solution approach in solving interoperability problems (Guijarro, 2009).
Synthesizing the research results of the ATHENA project is considered as the main purpose of the AIF. In general, the AIF helps integrators and developers by providing guidelines on how to address the ATHENA solutions with regard to their technical requirements and business needs for interoperability. The structure of the AIF is divided into three parts, namely, conceptual integra- tion, application integration, and technical integration